Goodbye stranger

Review by New York Times Review

IT'S REALLY NO WONDER 12-year-olds appear frequently not only in novels written for children but also in those written for adults. Taken together, the characters of some classic literature might give the appearance of a middle-school class trip - with the likes of Carson McCullers, William Golding and Vladimir Nabokov in charge, making use of the power of being 12, which is essentially the power of the threshold. If you write a book about characters of this age, you get to document that fleeting moment of change from childhood to not-childhood, when the only person looking out for you might well be you. McCullers's brilliant 1946 novel "The Member of the Wedding" used a spiky, soulful 12-year-old girl, Frankie Addams, as a vessel for ideas about, among other things, aloneness - both the day-to-day kind and the mortality kind. Frankie's yearning to be part of something bigger consumes her. As she describes her brother and his bride, "They are the we of me." Rebecca Stead, a children's writer of great feeling and invention, put 12-year-olds at the center of her first three books, "First Light," "When You Reach Me" (winner of the Newbery Medal) and "Liar and Spy." At the start of her masterly new novel, "Goodbye Stranger," Bridget Barsamian, known as Bridge, also seems to be about 12, and lives on the Upper West Side, where, when she was 8, she survived a near-death accident after skating into street traffic. The ordeal left its ghostprint upon her, which becomes newly evident in seventh grade, when the action of the book begins. Bridge has long been part of a happy threesome, along with her friends Tab and Emily. The pleasing complementarity of the girls lasts a long time, but now there are tremors of change. As Tab's older sister, Celeste, puts it, "Look at Emily with the curvy new curves!" Tab, for her part, has become "kind of a know-it-all." As for Bridge, she still draws little animals on her homework just as the three friends have been doing since she returned to school in fourth grade after a long recovery, but when her teacher writes an admonishing note about not doodling on homework, she shows it to her friends to see if they've been similarly reprimanded and neither has drawn on her work at all. Emily reassures her, "We're still a set." But if you have to remind yourselves that you're still a set, are you one? Now, suddenly, other people are starting to matter, too. There's Sherm, Bridge's new friend, who gets his own, small story line told from his perspective. And there's Patrick, an eighth grader who encourages Em to send him a provocative selfie, which ends up being seen by many more people. While it might have been tempting to set the novel slightly before our current era to avoid dealing with devices or forms of communication that could date quickly (and, for that matter, require a book to break into ugly sans-serif font), Stead's nonhysterical treatment of Em's modern problem is illuminating and feels durable. As Em remarks, "the bad part was that it felt like they were making fun of my feeling good about the picture." When Tab - influenced by an old-school feminist teacher named Ms. Berman, who asks to be called Ms. Berperson and is secretly referred to as "the Berperson" - says she won't wear a "stupid girl" Halloween costume, "like a nurse in a miniskirt or a maid in fishnet stockings," Em declares that the Berperson is brainwashing her: "What does she think you should be for Halloween? A Teletubby?" Being a Teletubby might actually solve some problems; the creatures are pre-sexual, probably immortal and definitely part of an unchanging set. Bridge and her friends have far more human worries and desires, which will only increase as they get older. In fact, Stead also gives us glimpses of a mystery high school girl whose second-person sections, set on Valentine's Day, are interlaced throughout, and whose story line punctuates and eventually lightly twines with the seventh graders' dramas. What starts out seeming like a disturbing plot involving actual physical danger turns out to concern the casual cruelty that can rise up and potentially destroy teenagers' "friendship, likeship, loveship." Because of the "you" voice and the shrouding of her identity until the last section, this story line threatens to call attention to itself as a device, but finally it succeeds as a cautionary tale that signals what may lie ahead for the younger girls. THE CHARACTERS IN "Goodbye Stranger" search for ways to feel good, feel powerful and still feel like themselves even during new experiences like romantic attraction. As Sherm, the son of a cardiologist, finally tells Bridge: "You know what my dad told me once? He said the human heart ... wrings itself out. It twists in two different directions, like you'd do to squeeze the water out of a wet towel." But when, a moment later, Sherm says to her, "I'm not going to kiss you or anything," Bridge replies, "Good." For now. Through this thicket of rapid - practically cellular - growth and change, Stead has managed to clear distinctly articulated paths for her characters. This novel not only sensitively explores togetherness, aloneness, betrayal and love, it also acknowledges something crucial to the business of growing up: how anyone's personal "we of me" might look different a little while from now, and later still, different again. MEG WOLITZER'S novels include "The Interestings" and the young adult novel "Belzhar," which will be published in paperback next month.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2015]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Starting seventh grade means lots of changes for Bridge and her best friends Em and Tabitha. The most obvious is Em's sudden curves, which grab the attention of pretty much everyone. Other changes are more subtle, like the way Bridge starts looking forward to seeing her classmate Sherman Russo, or Tabitha's growing interest in feminism and social justice. With diverging interests and gently simmering jealousies among the threesome, it would be easy for Stead to tell an all-too-familiar tale of a crumbling tween-girl trio. But she doesn't: rather, she offers a refreshing story of three girls whose loving friendship survives fights, accepts odd habits, and offers ample forgiveness. Unfolding over a series of vignettes that alternate among Bridge, an unnamed high-school girl worried about the consequences of her betrayal of a friend, and letters Sherm writes to his absent grandfather, Stead's latest gradually teases out the nuanced feelings and motivations that guide her characters' sometimes unwise but never disastrous actions. Bridge and her friends are all experiencing a quietly momentous shift toward adulthood, and Stead gracefully, frankly, and humorously captures that change. Though that change is often scary, Stead shows how strongly love of all kinds can smooth the juddering path toward adulthood. Winsome, bighearted, and altogether rewarding. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The release of any new book by Newbery medalist Stead is a publishing event to circle on your calendar.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Three tween girls navigate the perils of junior high, boys, and texting, in this friendship novel from Newbery Medal-winning Stead. Veteran audiobook narrator Farr reads the bulk of the novel from the perspective of Bridge, one of the three BFFs. It's not clear why she has been cast here playing 23-year-olds, since her voice is clearly more suited to play their mothers. Even though she captures the sensitivity and humor of junior high, she's fundamentally misplaced. The audio production also weaves in strong supporting performances by voice actor Heyborne, who reads the letters written by Sherm, Bridge's friend turned love interest, and voice actor Simhan, who comes in and out of the story as a slightly older character whose identity is not revealed until the final scenes. Ages 10-up. A Random/Lamb hardcover. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 6-9-Ah, seventh grade! A year when your friends transform inexplicably, your own body and emotions perplex you, and the world seems fraught with questions, and the most confusing ones of all concern the nature of love. Stead focuses on Bridge Barsamian, her best girlfriends, and her newest friend Sherm-a boy who is definitely not her boyfriend (probably). They're navigating the shoals of adolescence on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Emily has suddenly developed a figure that attracts a lot of attention, Tabitha is an increasingly committed human rights activist, and Bridge has taken to wearing a headband with black cat's ears for reasons that are unclear even to her. The seventh graders aren't the only characters working out relationships. There are married parents and divorced parents and then there's Sherm's grandfather who has suddenly left his wife of 50 years and moved to New Jersey. There's also a mysterious character whose Valentine's Day is doled out in second-person snippets interspersed within the rest of the story. Love is serious, but Stead's writing isn't ponderous. It's filled with humor, delightful coincidences, and the sorts of things (salacious cell phone photos, lunchroom politics, talent show auditions) that escalate in ways that can seem life-shattering to a 13-year-old. The author keeps all her balls in the air until she catches them safely with ineffable grace. VERDICT An immensely satisfying addition for Stead's many fans.-Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Library, NY © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

Steads latest novel is as rich and complex as her Newbery Awardwinning When You Reach Me (rev. 7/09), which might present a challenge for an audiobook. Happily, this production successfully keeps track of multiple threads by using three different narrators. Seventh-grader Bridges chapters are read by one narrator; her friend Sherms by another; and an unnamed teenage girl whose narration is in the second person (you) is the third. Change, betrayal, deep friendship, family devotion, and the beginnings of romantic love and attraction are just some of the themes here, all portrayed through characters who are so vivid and realistic that the listener almost expects them to walk into the room. susan dove lempke (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Three interwoven narrative strands explore the complicated possibilities of friendship in early adolescence. Bridge (formerly Bridget) finds increasing confidence as she navigates her seventh-grade year, while, in unsent letters to his absent grandfather, classmate Sherm expresses grief and anger over changes in his family. And an unnamed, slightly older child in a second-person narrative spends a single miserable day avoiding school for reasons that are revealed at the turning point. Stead explores communication and how messagesdigital or verbal, intentional and inadvertent, delivered or kept privatesuffuse the awkward, tentative world of young teens leaping (or sometimes falling) from the nest in search of their new selves. From Bridge's cat-ears, worn daily from September through mid-February, to Sherm's stolid refusal to respond to his grandfather's texts, the protagonists try on their new and changing lives with a mixture of caution and recklessness. Stead adroitly conveys the way things get complicated so quickly and so completely for even fairly ordinary children at the edge of growing up with her cleareyed look at bullies and their appeal (one girl is "truly genius at being awful"), as well as her look at impulsiveness and the lure of easy sharing via text. She captures the stomach-churning moments of a misstep or an unplanned betrayal and reworks these events with grace, humor, and polish into possibilities for kindness and redemption. Superb. (Fiction. 11-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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ONE The Cat Ears Bridge started wearing the cat ears in September, on the third Monday of seventh grade. The cat ears were black, on a black headband. Not exactly the color of her hair, but close. Checking her reflection in the back of her cereal spoon, she thought they looked surprisingly natural. On the table in front of her was a wrinkled sheet of homework. It wasn't homework yet, actually. Aside from her name, the paper was blank. She itched to draw a small, round Martian in the upper left-hand corner. Instead, she put down the spoon, picked up her pen, and wrote: What is love? This was her assignment: answer the question "What is love?" In full sentences. She looked at the empty blue lines on the page and tried to imagine them full of words. Love is __________. Her mom had once told her that love was a kind of music. One day, you could just . . . hear it. "Was it like that when you met Dad?" Bridge had asked. "Like hearing music for the first time?" "Oh, I heard the music before that," her mom had said. "And I danced with a few people before I met Daddy. But when I found him, I knew I had a dance partner for life." But Bridge couldn't write that. And anyway, her mom was a cellist. Everything was about music to her. Bridge squeezed her eyes closed until she saw glittery things floating in the dark. Then she started writing, quickly. Love is when you like someone so much that you can't just call it "like," so you have to call it "love." It was only one sentence, but she was out of time. Bridge had noticed the cat ears earlier that morning, on the shelf above her desk, where they'd been sitting since the previous Halloween. They felt strange at first, and made the sides of her head throb a tiny bit when she chewed her cereal, but as she walked toward school, the ears became a comforting presence. When she was small, her father would sometimes rest his hand on her head as they went down the street. It was a little bit like that. Bridge stopped just outside the front doors of her school, slipped her phone out of her pocket, and texted her mom: At school. XOXO, her mom texted back. Bridge's mother was on an Amtrak train, coming home from a performance in Boston with her string quartet. Bridge's father, who owned a coffee place a few blocks from their apartment, had to be at the store by seven a.m. And her brother, Jamie, left early for high school. His subway ride was almost an hour long. So there had been no one at home that morning to make her think twice about the cat ears. Not that anyone in her family was the type to try to stop her from wearing them in the first place. And not that she was the type to be stopped. Tabitha was next to Bridge's locker, waiting. "Hurry up, the bell's about to ring." "Okay." Bridge faced her locker and puckered up. "One, two . . ." She leaned in and kissed the skinny metal door. "Nice one. You can stop doing that anytime, you know." Bridge spun her lock and jerked the door open. "Not until the end of the month." Seventh grade was the year they finally got to have lockers, and Bridge swore she was going to kiss hers every day until the end of September. "You have ears," Tab said. "Extra ones, I mean." "Yeah." Bridge put both hands up and touched the rounded tips of her cat ears. "Soft." "They're sweet. You gonna wear them all day?" "Maybe." Madame Lawrence might make her take them off, she knew. But Bridge didn't have French on Mondays. If she had French on Mondays, life would really be unfair. The next day she wore them again. "Un chat!" Madame Lawrence said, pointing as Bridge took her seat at the very back of the room. And Bridge's head tingled in the way that happens when someone points. But that was all. By Wednesday, the ears felt like a regular part of her. Valentine's Day You paint your toenails. You don't steal nail polish, though. Vinny calls you chicken: all of her polish comes from the six-dollar manicure place. Every month, she puts another bottle in her pocket while the lady is getting the warm towel for her hands. You told her you want to be a lawyer and can't be stealing stuff. Vinny rolled her eyes. Then Zoe rolled her eyes. Vinny's eye-rolls are perfect dives, but Zoe always tries too hard. Her lids tremble and her eyeballs look like they might disappear into her head. Your mother is shouting that it's time to leave for school. You suck in air and shout back: "Just a minute!" You are not going to school. She doesn't realize that, of course. It turns out that, in high school, not painting your toenails is considered disgusting. You blow on your wet toes, little puffs. "So much for the freshman-year perfect-attendance certificate," you tell yourself. "What?" Your mother is standing in the doorway looking impatient. "Nothing," you say. She squeaks about your flip-flops, how it's February, but you tell her it's fine, it's not so cold, there's no gym today, and nobody cares. Really you are just going to hang out in the park until she leaves for work. Then you will come back home. Your feet are ice. The flip-flops were a stupid idea--what were you thinking? The playground swings are freezing and your hands ache, but you hold on, walk yourself back a few steps, and let your body fly. It feels wonderful. The playground is deserted. It's too early for little kids to be out, especially in February, and everyone else is where you're supposed to be: at school. On your way to the park, you had to dodge Bridge Barsamian, struggling with a big cardboard box, those tatty-looking cat ears she's been wearing since September peeking over the top. You sidestepped into a bodega just in time. You lean forward and swing back, lean back and swing forward. Straight ahead of you is the big rock where you played when you were little. There's a divot in it, a crater where everyone dumped acorns, leaves, grass, those poison red berries if there were any. You poured them from your shirt-hammocks into the crater and poked the mess with sticks. "Dinner!" You'd all sit in a circle, and Vinny would dare everyone to lick their berry-stained fingers. She was always in charge--even then, before you understood it, her beauty was hard to look away from: glossy dark hair and full red lips. Snow White with a tan and a strut. It's windy on the little platform at the top of the wooden climbing tower. The short walls are covered with messages scrawled in thick marker, big sloppy hearts and dirty words. When you were small, you would swing yourself up legs-first, but now you have to stick your head through the opening in the floor and then hoist the rest. You certainly have grown, you tell yourself. You sit on the rough plank floor and wedge your back into the nearest corner, the one that was always yours. You can almost see them, in their places: Vinny to the left, Zoe to the right. They're not your friends anymore. They're both other people now. The girls you can see looking back at you are gone. No one talks about these disappearances. Everyone pretends it's all right. Remember the time you found a beer bottle up here? It was empty, but the three of you took turns holding it, staggering around and pretending to drink--though never touching it to your lips; that would have been disgusting. You felt almost drunk for real. Vinny's father had been there that afternoon, seen you, and demanded that you all come down. He took the empty bottle with one hand and jerked Vinny's arm with the other, dragging her toward a garbage can. She tried to cover, acting like she was just walking along next to him, double-time. You check your phone. Your mom was getting into the shower when you left. You wonder if she has left for work. You can see the sun touching the tops of the buildings across the street, making its way through the neighborhood like someone whose attention you are careful not to attract. It's still shady in the playground. But aside from the loneliness, and the cold, it's all exactly the same. If you keep your own body out of sight, you could be nine years old again. Another Book on Top When Bridge came back to school in fourth grade, after the accident, Tabitha introduced her to Emily. And then Tab and Emily showed Bridge how they drew little animals on their homework, in the upper left-hand corners of their papers, underneath their names. Tab always drew a funny bird, and Emily always drew a spotted snake. They said that Bridge should choose an animal to draw in the upper left-hand corners of her homework, and then they would be a club. Bridge announced that she was allergic to clubs, that she would rather be a set, like in math. Her mother had homeschooled her. Actually, a lot of it had been hospital school. "A set?" Tab repeated. "Yes," Bridge said. "We could be the set of all fourth graders who draw animals on their homework papers." That night, Bridge thought about what her animal should be. A cat? A frog? She decided she would draw a Martian, with a circle body, a circle mouth, two feet but no legs, and three eyes. The next day, she showed her Martian to Tab and Emily, feeling shy. But Tab clapped when she saw it, and Emily said "Awesome!" And then the three of them held up their papers in a kind of circle on the lunch table, so that their animals could see one another. "Is a Martian an animal, though?" Bridge asked. "A Martian is a creature," Tab said. "And so is a snake. And so is a bird." And from then on, they were the set of all fourth graders who drew creatures on their homework. More than that, they were friends. The next year, Bridge, Tab, and Emily were the set of fifth graders who drew creatures on their homework papers, and they drew the same things they had drawn before: bird, snake, and Martian. Their friendship grew stronger, like a rope that thickened little by little. On the Monday after spring vacation, Emily sighed, rested her chin on the lunchroom table, and said, "Can sets have rules?" "Sure," Bridge said. "What rules?" Tab asked, suspicious. "It's only one rule," Em said. "No fighting." "No fighting?" Bridge said. "Yeah, just--no fighting. Okay?" "But we have to swear on something," Tab said. She put her second Twinkie in the middle of the table. "Let's swear on this." Em smiled. "The magic Twinkie of no fighting?" They each ate a third. When middle school started, they were the set of sixth graders who drew creatures on their homework and did not fight. That was the year Em's parents got divorced. The rope became even stronger. In seventh grade, things were different. Not the rope. Other things. First of all, now Emily had a "body." Bridge could see this for herself, and Tab's older sister, Celeste, who was in high school, confirmed it: "Look at Emily with the curvy new curves!" It had happened quickly. Bridge heard her mother telling her father that Emily's "growth spurt" made her think of those silent four-year-olds who suddenly start speaking in full sentences. Seventh grade had sports teams and foreign languages. Emily turned out to be not only the second-fastest runner in the grade but also one of the best players on the girls' JV soccer team, and now even the eighth graders said hi to her. And Tab, who had always spoken French at home but almost never raised her hand at school, became kind of a know-it-all. Madame Lawrence, who was very strict, sometimes chatted and laughed with Tab before class. In French. Bridge was horrible at French. And then Bridge's English teacher handed back the first homework assignment of the year. He had circled her three-eyed Martian and written No doodling on homework, please. Next time I will take off points. When she showed Emily and Tab and asked if anyone had drawn big red circles around their creatures, they looked at each other and admitted that they hadn't drawn anything on their homework in the first place. "You guys." Bridge dropped her arm so that her paper slapped her thigh. "Seriously?" Emily grabbed Bridge's hand and said, "We're still a set. We're the set of all seventh graders who used to draw stuff on their homework." "And who don't fight," Tab added. "Don't forget the Twinkie." "Right," Em said. She looked at Bridge. "Forever." "And ever," Tab said. But Bridge understood that life didn't balance anymore. Life was a too-tall stack of books that had started to lean to one side, and each new day was another book on top. Maybe Emily had long legs, and her chest jiggled a little when she moved. She probably jiggled exactly the right amount. And it didn't slow her down on the soccer field. At all. "Wow, she just exploded," Bridge heard someone say after Em scored a goal during the first game of the season. But she wasn't sure if it was Emily's speed or her body that was exploding. She and Tab watched the kids running back and forth in the knee-high dust. It was almost October but still summer-hot. "So what's with the ears?" Tab asked. Bridge shrugged. "They're ears." "It's been a week. How long are you going to wear them?" "I don't know." Bridge could feel Tab studying her, but she didn't turn her head. "Maybe until it rains?" She touched the cat ears carefully with four fingers. "I don't want them to get wet." "Are you okay?" Tab asked. "Sure," Bridge said. On the last day of September, Bridge kissed her locker for the last time and Emily got a text from a boy. It had not rained. Bridge was still wearing the ears. The text was from an eighth grader. It said: S'up? "Wild," Em said. "Are you gonna text him back?" Tab asked. "Maybe," Emily said. On the first day of October, Emily got a text from a boy asking for a picture. "Same boy," Em said. "That eighth grader. His name is Patrick. Very cute, actually. And he plays soccer." They were sitting against the fence after Emily's second win. "A picture of what?" Tab asked, pulling at the dry grass. She was stirring up dust that made Bridge want to sneeze. Excerpted from Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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